AMD Ryzen 9600X and 9700X leaks suggest these CPUs will offer a big leap in performance
The mainstream champs made even stronger
Leaked benchmarks have surfaced online for AMD's mainstream Ryzen 9000 processors, the incoming mid-range 9600X and 9700X, showing some supposed major performance gains over Team Red's current Ryzen 7000 equivalents.
As spotted by Videocardz, Geekbench 6 scores have appeared for these two next-gen Zen 5 processors showing impressive results (add seasoning as ever with leaks).
The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (with six-cores and 12-threads) managed an impressive 3,284 in single-core and 14,594 in multi-core. For reference, this is around 6% faster than the top-end Intel Core i9-14900K, but the Ryzen CPU will obviously be available for a far cheaper price.
As for the multi-core performance of the 9600X, it's solid, but expectedly slower than Intel's 14th-gen Core i7 and i9 processors, as well as high-end Ryzen 7000 chips due to their greater amount of cores and threads. However, that score of 14,594 is 13% faster than the current AMD Ryzen 7600X. So overall, these are impressive figures for a six-core CPU.
It's a similar story with the upcoming AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, which has a reported single-core result of 3,312 and a multi-core of 16,431 (again in Geekbench 6). For context, that's a full 7% faster than Intel's 14900K in the former category, even if it can't quite compete in terms of multi-core performance. Still, for an eight-core processor these numbers are encouraging.
If we compare the 9700X to the current 7700X, the Zen 5 upgrade shows a sizeable uplift of 13% in single-core and 7% in multi-core performance. While that won't likely be enough to persuade 7700X owners to upgrade, gamers will certainly benefit from that single-core uptick here if they're jumping onto Team Red's Ryzen platform for the first time.
AMD looks set to continue its value play for gamers
Single-core performance remains the most important factor when gaming, and both these next-gen Ryzen CPUs deliver in this respect. Should these leaked Geekbench 6 benchmarks be accurate, then the Ryzen 9600X and 9700X might be considered among the best processors for their price-to-performance ratios.
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So, if all this pans out, it'll be heartening to see relatively wallet-friendly Ryzen chips outclass their rival's flagship offerings in some respects, even if they aren't anywhere near as good for creativity or productivity.
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Aleksha McLoughlin is an experienced hardware writer. She was previously the Hardware Editor for TechRadar Gaming until September 2023. During this time, she looked after buying guides and wrote hardware reviews, news, and features. She has also contributed hardware content to the likes of PC Gamer, Trusted Reviews, Dexerto, Expert Reviews, and Android Central. When she isn't working, you'll often find her in mosh pits at metal gigs and festivals or listening to whatever new black and death metal has debuted that week.